


Atlantis

by eugyne (AreteNike)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, i dont fucking remember what happens in this fic so im probs missing some tags soz, mild body horror, near drowning/suffocation, needles (very brief)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-03-04 03:06:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13355193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AreteNike/pseuds/eugyne
Summary: All Lance expected to find, as a marine biologist, was a lot of fish, maybe a new kind of squid or something if he's lucky; instead he finds an underwater bioweapon development facility and his high school crush.Written for the Aphelion fanfic zine!





	Atlantis

“No samples today, lad,” comes the voice over the radio, and Lance has to sigh.

“Coran,” he whines. “I _know._ ”

“You've been known to forget.”

“And you always stop me anyway, but I promise, I _know._ No samples, just observations.” Lance shifts the controls a little, so that the lights push out into a different direction in the darkness. His descent is still slow and steady. “I got this.”

“Be careful with Rover!”

“ _Coran._ ”

There's a sigh on the other end of the line, one that Lance echoes.

“You're piloting a very expensive and delicate piece of equipment, you know,” Coran adds.

“And this is, like, my third time doing that. Stop being such a worrywart and tell me my ETA.”

There's a pause, and then Coran gives in. “Twenty minutes more. You should see signs of deep-sea vents within the next five.”

“Sweet.“ Lance leans back in his seat, insofar as he can—the tiny sub doesn't leave much room for lounging. Most of the interior is taken up by the seat; the walls are covered in controls, and there’s only one tiny window in front of him. He likes to glance out of it when he can, but the cameras have a wider viewing angle.

There’s not much to do but wait, though he does keep half an eye on the screens. When he sees something in the distance, barely lit by his lights, he takes note and sits up.

“Hm.” He leans in towards the screen a little more, trying to figure out what it could be—it doesn't seem to be moving, so it's probably not alive, whatever it is. He'd think it were some sort of seafloor terrain feature, except he should still be a good ten minutes up.

“See something?” Coran says, like he doesn't have the video feeds up on the ship too.

“Yeah, dunno what. There's something ahead. Big.”

“Whale, perhaps?”

“I don't think it's moving. Could be a shipwreck?”

“That’s odd if it is! There aren't supposed to be any in this area.”

“Well, maybe it's a missing plane or something. Or a ship that no one knew was here. It's definitely big, though.”

At least, he can't see the edges of it, not that he can see much of anything down here.

Coran is quiet, but Lance can practically hear him thinking.

“Can I go check it o—”

“Yes. Do that.”

“Yes, sir,” Lance says cheerfully, taking control. The wires up to the ship have enough slack to let him nudge the sub forward, closer to the whatever-it-is. It grows brighter as he brings the lights closer, but the texture and shape of the thing don't grow any more apparent than before.

“It looks like… concrete,” Coran says after a moment. “See if you can’t find the edge.”

“Righto.” He steers Rover within a couple feet of the surface—it _does_ look like concrete—and then Lance turns it towards the right and heads that way. The surface just curves slightly away as he goes, forcing him to correct his course frequently to follow it.

“I'm starting to think it's circular,” he says after a couple minutes of this.

“I believe it's a dome,” Coran responds. “It seems to curve upwards as well!”

“Okay,” Lance says slowly. “What's a concrete dome doing at the bottom of the ocean?”

“Deep sea littering?”

“This is a hell of a thing to drag all the way out here to dump. I mean, how far am I from the seabed?”

“At least one-hundred feet. Whatever this is, it's enormous.”

“Right, so… what now?”

There's a long pause.

“I'd very much like to know what this thing is doing here,” Coran says finally, which, despite Lance's own curiosity, isn't really what he wanted to hear.

“Coran, I've got a _really_ bad feeling about this,” he says. “Like, if someone put this here for a reason, I don't think they'll appreciate me poking around.”

“Come now, what could be living in a concrete dome this deep?”

“Uh… fish?”

“ _Besides_ fish.”

Lance grumbles incoherently. “I still don't like it.”

“I'll winch you back up at the first sign of trouble,” Coran promises. Easy for him to say, he's not the one sitting in a tin can hundreds of feet below the ocean's surface.

“I'll hold you to that,” Lance responds reluctantly, and turns the sub around to move away from the dome so he can continue his descent.

He gets maybe twenty feet further when the sub shudders around him.

“Uh?” He checks the cameras, but there's nothing visible that could have bumped him that hard—actually, he hasn't seen any signs of life in a while. Stuff down here isn't usually afraid of Rover.

“What?” Coran asks.

“There's a weird current down here, I think,” Lance explains, biting back panic. It's _probably_ nothing. “Or maybe the winch got jammed for a sec. Something ga—” He cuts himself off when the sub shudders again.

“You got bumped?”

“There's nothing to bump me. Coran, get me back up to the ship, _please_.” Okay, usually he's above begging, but he's really freaking out now. “ _Please_.”

“Alright, alright. Reversing now.” Oh, thank god. “We can try this again somewhere else, later. Alfor won't be too happy about it, though.”

“Alfor can come see the mystery dome for himself, dammit! I'm _out._ ”

The sub shudders again; Lance prays it's the winch. Then it jerks, sharply, and he's pretty sure that _wasn't_ the winch.

“Hands off the controls, Lance,” says Coran.

“I am not touching a damn thing, Coran,” Lance mutters tightly. He lifts his hands up by his head as if for proof, not that Coran can see him.

“That's…” Coran sucks in a breath. “Reverse, away from the dome. _Now._ ”

“Shit!” Lance does, grabbing for the joysticks and pulling them back more sharply than necessary. He does not under any circumstances want to know what managed to rattle Coran, and he has no intention of sticking around to find out.

Except, the sub whines beneath him, and shudders harder, but doesn't get any farther from the dome.

“It's not _working_.” His voice raises to all but a squeak.

“Keep trying,” insists Coran, and then there's muffled shouting, like he's got his hand over the radio. Oh god, oh god.

Then there's a loud, ominous  _crack,_ and Coran's questioning shout over the radio is the last thing Lance hears before the sub drops beneath him and the lights die.

* * *

Lance can't see a goddamn thing.

The sub goes pitch-black, which can only mean one thing: he's been disconnected from the ship. Without the connection the sub lurches wildly, throwing Lance against the side of the sub into the once very important but now  _completely fucking useless_ controls.

There's a flash of something that might be artificial light, faint, through the window. Before he can make out what it is, the sub hits something and rolls to a stop, leaving Lance upside-down in utter darkness.

“Shit,” he whispers into the void. It echoes back hollowly. “Shit. Shit. Okay.”

He struggles to right himself, but it's hard in the cramped space. He can't see where he's putting his hands—and some of the stuff in this sub is _sharp_ , ow—but he ends up crouched on the ceiling. On… he feels around. He's squatting on the hatch. The only way in and out of this stupid tin can is  _beneath_ him, against the seabed or dome or whatever-the-hell.

Not that leaving the sub is a good idea anyway, considering he's on the bottom of the fucking ocean. It gets a lot deeper than this, sure, but it's plenty deep enough to crush him before he gets to the surface. Besides, it's not like he's got scuba gear or anything. He's stuck here.

Okay, deep breath, Lance. Not too deep, though. The air's gonna run out.

No, Lance, fuck, stay positive.

He feels around for the tiny window and presses his nose right up against it, straining to see something, _anything_ in the darkness.

For a few moments, darkness is all he sees. Then, as though a switch has been flipped, muted light suddenly penetrates all the way down to his little window. All it reveals is the unnaturally flat surface the sub rests on, and the similarly unnatural wall to the right. He can't shake the feeling he's in a _pool_.

Still, the light has to be coming from somewhere. He can't see the surface of the water above, but if he's inside the dome now, maybe there's air here? If there's light, maybe there are _people_.

If there's light, maybe they know he's here, and can get him back up to his ship.

Feeling considerably more optimistic, he shifts back from the window. First things first, he's not going anywhere unless he can right the sub. He throws his weight to the left, then right, and it rocks; he does it again and again, building up some momentum.

It rolls over sooner than he expects, and he tumbles onto his back with a yell. He sits up on his heels, rubbing his shoulder—his shirt is torn and his skin is sticky with blood, great—and looks up.

There's a face in the window.

Lance starts, scrambling back over the seat's low back and probably smearing blood all over the equipment. The man gives the “okay” gesture at him and lifts his eyebrows, and after a moment, Lance returns it. He looks… really familiar.

He also isn't wearing a mask or any sort of visible breathing apparatus, so either he's some kind of merman—which, y'know, would really figure—or there's air not far above.

The guy points upwards a couple times, and swims upward, kicking his legs past the window. Not a merman, then.

Okay, so Lance just has to get out. And all he has to do is open the hatch, which is heavy on a good day but now has who-knows-how-many gallons of water pressing down on it, just waiting to pour in on him.

Sure enough, cold water starts dripping through as soon as he unseals it. He gives an experimental push against the hatch—it doesn't budge. Of course.

There's a knock on the hatch. He raps his knuckles against it in return. There's another tap, and then a kind of scraping, and the hatch twitches.

Immediately water pours in on him, not a total deluge yet, but at least comparable to standing under a shower head. He braces himself against the seat, leaning his shoulders up against the hatch, and pushes off with his legs. The water pours in all the harder as it opens, letting his precious air bubble up out into the unknown.

There’s another knock: one, two, three. He takes a deep breath while he still can, and heaves.

The hatch opens, and the water swirls around his waist, pours into his face so that he can't breathe, pushes him back down into the sub—except something pulls him up. Someone.

He doesn't open his eyes until his head breaks the surface of the water, coughing and spluttering and thanking whatever deity might be listening that he's _alive_. He wipes the water from his face with his free hand, the other still in the grip of his rescuer—their legs keep brushing as they kick to stay afloat—and turns to look at the man who saved his life.

Oh no, Lance recognizes him now.

This is Takashi Shirogane, the guy he had a crush on only for _all of high school._ And probably a few years after, frankly, though they lost contact after graduation. What the _hell_ is he doing here?

“Are you alright?” Shiro asks, brow furrowed. There's a faint scar across his nose now and his bangs are white but neither detract from his looks at all. In fact, he’s probably gotten hotter. Shit.

“Fantastic,” Lance wheezes. He looks around; the room is pretty bare, just a big concrete box that's half pool with some bolts and fittings for equipment that isn’t here. “Where the fuck am I?”

“Ah.” Shiro's face drops into a frown. “This is… Atlantis.”

Lance gives him a look, and he kind of shrugs, like he knows he's being ridiculous but it's out of his hands somehow.

“Atlantis,” Lance repeats.

“That's what it's called.”

“Great. Cool.” Lance looks down into the water, beneath their feet; his sub is a shadow at the pool's bottom. “How do I get back to my ship?”

There’s no answer. Lance looks up to see Shiro grimacing, looking out across the room and pointedly not at Lance.

“That's going to be a problem,” he says.

“ _What_ does that mean.”

“Why don't we get out of the water, for now?” he suggests instead, and pulls Lance toward the edge of the pool. He's strong as hell—he _was_ an athlete, but he must’ve beefed up to be able to open the hatch like that. He definitely _looks_ beefier.

Shiro finally lets him go to heave himself up onto the lip, and reaches a hand down for Lance—he's wearing a glove or something, because the hand is an odd pinkish-purple tone, with a sort of ribbed texture. Lance decides he’d rather not, and pulls himself up unaided.

“Well, I guess it’s nice to see you again, anyway,” Shiro says, once Lance has gotten to his feet.

“You remember me?” Lance was definitely not expecting that—not that he was unpopular, but Shiro was on another level entirely.

“Yeah?” Shiro’s brow crinkles. “We went to the same high school. Lance, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, I just… never mind.” This might as well be happening, today is already weird enough as it is.

Shiro shrugs it off. “Okay. Come on.” He gestures back toward the door; there are towels shelved in the short hall outside, and they both grab one. Shiro pauses at the door at the other end.

“…I guess he knows you’re here already,” he mutters, evidently to himself, because he doesn’t explain before pushing open the next door.

The room beyond is enormous and filled with tanks. It’s like a bizarre aquarium, except that there's a lot more equipment out in the open and the tanks contain creatures unlike any Lance has seen before.

And considering he's a marine biologist, he's seen a _lot_ of sea creatures.

“What the fuck is this,” he mutters.

“We call it the Monster Room,” Shiro replies.

“You _don't say._ ” Lance pauses by the nearest tank—his first impression is “dolphin” but it has a few too many trailing fins and a beak more reminiscent of a squid's. He shudders.

“That's Bertha. She bites,” Shiro comments. “You'll have plenty of time to look later, but right now, the Commander's expecting you.”

“Bertha,” Lance repeats faintly. He follows after Shiro on autopilot for a minute, before he processes the rest of the sentence. “Wait, the Commander? Is that who's in charge here?”

“Yes.”

“Soooo, he can get me out of here?”

Lance can't see Shiro's face from here, but he can see his shoulders hunch up a little. “He… _can_ , yes.”

_But he won't_ is implied. Lance doesn't like this at all.

* * *

The Commander commands from above the Monster Room. They pass a scant handful of people on the way; all stare blatantly at Lance, which is as unnerving as it is uncomfortable. Some look sad, some sympathetic; some look, frankly, dead inside.

What the _fuck_ kind of place is this?

The room above looks more like a ship's bridge than a boss's office, and presiding over it all is a giant of a man with a large, misshapen shoulder and arm. He turns slowly, posture stiff and upright.

“This is the only occupant of the sub,” Shiro tells him cautiously. “Sir.”

The Commander says nothing yet, just looks Lance up and down, calculating. One of his eyes is completely yellow, which is seriously disconcerting, not to mention, y'know, the _arm_. Which is enormous and wrinkled and fuchsia and ends in a massive, clawed hand. Lance wonders if he's dreaming; this is too weird to be real.

“I see,” the Commander says, slowly, like he's considering how best to deal with the intrusion. Lance eyes his hand nervously.

“Uh, hi,” he says. “Sorry for, uh, popping in. Totally unintentional. But my sub's been disconnected from my ship, so if you could show me another way out, or have someone take me back up to the surface, that'd be… swell.”

Coran would’ve liked that pun, no matter how unintended. Lance shifts in place as the Commander's eyes narrow.

“What are you?” he demands.

“…Pardon?”

The Commander gestures with his real arm towards him. “What are you, that you came here in a… miniscule submarine? What was your purpose?”

Lance hunches inward, shrinking back from the man's mismatched gaze. “I'm a marine biologist? We were just doing a sweep of the area to keep an eye on the effects of nearby pollutants…”

The Commander nods slowly. “Yes. We could make use of you.” He turns away again. “Shirogane. Take him to the living quarters and find him a bunk, then put him to work.”

What the fuck? “Hey, hey, wait,” Lance interjects quickly. “I'm not—I just want to get back to my ship, I already _have_ a job, I'm not looking for another.”

The Commander turns his head, slightly. “You will not be leaving.”

“I—what? Look, you must have a radio or something down here, right? Just let me call up and let them know I'm _alive_ , they can come get me and you won't have to do anything. I gotta get back.” Lance is _this close_ to hyperventilating, and he barely hears the warning hiss from Shiro, nor feels the tug on his shoulder as the man tries to pull him away.

The Commander turns slowly. Then his purple arm shoots out—stretching unnaturally far—to grab the sodden front of Lance's shirt. He squeaks as he's dragged forward, barely supporting his own weight, shivering.

“You will _not_ be leaving,” the Commander hisses into Lance’s face. His breath smells like rot. Lance scrambles uselessly at the claw that’s holding him up on his toes—up close it's got a ribbed, veiny texture, pulsing unnaturally. “I will teach you obedience, _scum_.”

“Sir!” Shiro says quickly. “Sir, he’s new, he couldn’t have known. There’s no need…” His voice trails off as the Commander’s gaze slides over to him.

The claw releases Lance, and he falls backward and scrambles away before he even tries to get up. He picks up his fallen towel again, clinging to it like it’ll protect him from the monster above him.

“Do as I ordered,” the Commander says to Shiro, “then report back to me.”

Shiro stiffens. “Yes, sir,” he says, and turns. His face is pinched and pale as he comes and hauls Lance to his feet, and marches him right out the door.

“Sorry,” he adds once they're out of earshot. “I would've warned you, but I thought there was still a chance…”

“What the _fuck?_ ” is all Lance can say. “What the fuck.”

“This place is…” Shiro shakes his head. “We've all been forced to stay, one way or another. I’m sorry.”

So Lance has found himself in an underwater monster-filled prison. _Fantastic._

He numbly lets Shiro lead him through the halls and down a couple levels, to a room full of bunks, and only then does he find his words.

“This is a nightmare,” he says. “I'm just dreaming. Any minute now I'll wake up in my sub with Coran yelling at me for falling asleep on the job. I just need to wake up.”

Shiro sighs, and folds his towel onto the nearest bunk to sit. “If only it were that easy.”

“No. You're supposed to say, ‘yes, Lance, you're dreaming.’”

Shiro only gives him a sympathetic look, and Lance crumples onto the next bunk, wet clothes be damned.

“Please,” he begs.

“I'm sorry,” Shiro says again.

“Nng.” Lance hides his face in his hands. Coran probably thinks he drowned; he's going to blame himself for letting Lance look at the dome, for not pulling him back up fast enough. Who's going to take care of his cats? Oh god, somebody's going to have to tell his mother he went missing. That there won't be a body because he was lost 700 feet deep. Will they run a retrieval mission for the sub, or will they decide it's too dangerous and write it off, write _him_ off?

He has to get out of here, somehow.

“Is there really no way out?” He finally looks up from his hands at Shiro.

“Our supplies are lowered to us in weighted crates. Our samples are whatever swims by.” Shiro frowns. “There's no emergency escape route. If this place goes down, we go down with it.”

“Jesus.”

Shiro sighs and stands. “Come on. I need to take you back to the Monster Room before I report back to Sendak.”

“Sendak?”

“The Commander.”

Lance hesitates. “He seemed… really pissed. What's he going to do to you?”

Shiro stiffens. “I don't know. But it's better I don't put it off.”

Well, shit. “Sorry.”

Shiro shakes his head. “You didn't know.”

Lance stands, shakily. To think that less than an hour ago he was arguing with Coran over samples! And now he's trapped here.

“Let's go,” he says quietly. Shiro claps his shoulder but doesn’t reply—there's nothing to say.

Shiro leads him back up to the Monster Room, points him to a tank, and leaves. Lance checks the vitals of the creature within, glancing frequently over to the door to the stairwell. No one approaches him or even so much as speaks to him. He’s still wearing his now-ruined shirt, towel draped over his shoulders, and his shivering doesn’t stop even though the room is uncomfortably warm and humid.

Shiro returns, some twenty or so minutes later, pale and moving slowly. His shirt hangs oddly off his shoulders, and when he turns to close the door behind him, Lance can see there are claw marks clear across his back. He comes over to Lance, torso held stiff, while Lance can only watch in horror.

“The good news is,” Shiro says faintly, “you're not in trouble.”

Lance swallows. His throat is dry. “Turn around.”

Shiro hesitates, but obeys; the tears through his shirt reveal that the fresh marks are layered over older ones. Nothing's actively bleeding, at least—though how they could have healed so quickly Lance doesn’t know—but the shirt is damp and faintly splotched with what must have been blood.

“Why?” Lance asks finally, and Shiro turns to face him again.

“I stood up to him,” he answers. “I have to get back to work. He… wanted you to see. So you wouldn't…” His voice trails off, tired.

Lance nods slowly. He gets the picture, though he really wishes he didn't. “Okay.”

Shiro nods back and heads across the room, to another tank, and reaches for the equipment there. Lance turns back to the tank in front of him. No one else in the room so much as looks up.

One thing is for sure: he has to get out of this place, and he has to take Shiro with him.

* * *

There's no clock around, no daylight to measure the passage of time by, but after what must be hours of examining tanks full of monsters and desperately trying to look busy, a loud alarm goes off. There's a collective sigh of relief, and those in the room stop their work and head toward the staircase. Lance, tired and hungry and curious (in that order), follows.

The crowd heads downstairs to the living quarters, and pushes into a large room full of tables. There are more people in this room, though not many, and the smell of food—not especially good food, but certainly edible—wafts around them. Lance sneaks up through the crowd to Shiro's side; his back doesn't look any better now, but he's holding himself less stiffly.

“Hi,” Lance says quietly. The rest of the workers _are_ talking now, albeit in hushed tones, but the atmosphere is noticeably lighter.

Shiro glances over at him. “Hey,” he says, with a weak smile. “Dinnertime.”

Lance follows him through the cafeteria line and to a table. Several others join them shortly.

“Everyone, this is Lance,” Shiro tells them.

“Lance,” one says, holding out a hand to shake. “I’m Matt. Sorry to see you here.”

“Sorry to be here,” Lance responds in kind, and Matt half-snorts.

“Aren't we all.”

“How long have you been here?”

The rest of the employees look to each other, and shrug. “Years, maybe?” one says. “It's hard to keep track. Nothing changes down here.”

“No seasons,” another adds. “Nothing.”

“Has anyone…” Lance swallows; he's pretty sure this is a dangerous question to ask, at this point, but he has to know. “Has anyone ever tried to escape?”

The group hunches inward immediately, eyes darting all around the room. Several look distinctly uncomfortable, but Matt leans forward.

“Don't ask that so loudly,” he says. “But yeah, tried.”

Lance puts down his fork and leans in too. “And?”

“And they died. Most didn't even make it out of the dome; the one that did drowned long before he reached the surface.” Matt leans back. “And that's all there is to say about it. Just forget it.”

“For your own safety,” Shiro adds. Lance eyes him.

“Are you okay?” he asks. Shiro still looks pale, and he's just picking at his food, barely eating it.

But he smiles anyway. “I'm fine. I've had worse.” He waves his right hand—the pink one—a little.

“Yeah, uh.” Lance eyes said hand. “What's the deal with that?”

“You ask too many questions,” someone mutters. Lance ignores her.

“Biomodification,” Shiro says with a grimace. “The same as we use on the monsters.”

Lance can't help but recoil a bit at that. Something flashes across Shiro's face—hurt?—but he says nothing more.

“Sendak forces us to do it when there's a serious injury,” another woman adds. “Shiro's not the only one with something that's been… replaced.”

Lance shudders. She nods sympathetically; Shiro looks away.

“Just be careful around here,” he says.

“No kidding,” says Lance.

This conversation has taught him more than a few things, though:

  1. The staff are considered useful enough to keep alive, even to the point of modification;
  2. Despite that, escape attempts are met with death instead of recapture;
  3. Lance needs a better plan than “get out of the dome” if he doesn’t want to drown;
  4. He has to do it on his own, because anyone that might help him will be punished too if he fails—and harshly, he thinks, glancing over at Shiro's shredded shirt.



He doesn't ask any more questions. As long as these people don't know he's planning to escape, they can't get hurt on his account.

He does wonder, though, how Sendak managed to lose an arm—and eye, too, he realizes. He's clearly not above using resources on himself—and going overboard, if Lance compares his arm to Shiro's. Shiro's is the same shape and size as his human arm, while Sendak's definitely isn't.

It strikes Lance that Sendak doesn't seem the sort to _go down with the ship_ if something were to happen to this place. Let everyone else here die, sure, but he must have an escape route for himself.

If Lance can find it, he can get out.

* * *

The bunk room has a good handful of empty beds besides the one Lance has claimed, he notes as he climbs into it that evening. He shudders under his blanket when he realizes that they must have belonged to those who tried to escape.

“Don't go wandering around after lights out,” Matt, his nearest neighbor, warns.

“What'll happen if I do?”

“Just… don't.”

That answer isn't satisfying in the slightest. Not that Lance is too keen on finding out what'll happen—or that he can't guess—but if he's going to find Sendak's escape route, it's better he do it sooner rather than later. He doesn't really think that “I got lost on the way to the bathroom” will work on Sendak at all, but if it will, it's now, when the excuse is still feasible.

He waits until soft snores permeate the room, then waits a little longer. He sits up slowly, looking around; the light is limited to faintly glowing strips along the floor at the foot of every bed, casting all their inhabitants in shadow. Someone shifts in their sleep and settles back down; Lance takes a deep breath, as if about to jump into water, and slips out of bed and creeps toward the door.

It slides open for him with a soft noise; he ducks out and waits for it to shut before he moves again. He edges down along the hall, towards the stairs; he has no idea if Sendak lives on this floor with the rest, but he figures any escape route will be near the top of the dome.

He makes it most of the way down the hall before he hears a noise—a steady click, click, click, accompanied by a light scraping of something hard against the linoleum floor and periodic thumps, like something being dragged down the stairs.

He freezes and looks frantically around the hallway; the bunk room is a ways behind him, and the nearest door is closer to the stairs, where the noise is coming from. Next to him is a small trapdoor set into the wall—garbage chute? Shit, he can hear the thing's breathing now, a raspy, gurgling sound, like someone with a bad cold.

He'll have to make do. He opens the garbage chute door and slides onto it, reaching in and pushing against the walls to keep from falling. He carefully scoots off the door and into the chute completely as the approaching thing gets closer, and shifts to press his back full along one wall so he can use his folded legs to push and keep him in place—god, it reeks in here. He pulls the door mostly shut, leaving it open just a crack, so he can see when the whatever-it-is makes it down the stairs.

It does, less than a minute later—his first impression is _turtle_ , though it barely resembles one. Its head is like a sea turtle's, and it has a shell—though it looks more like an enormous sea urchin than a turtle shell—but its limbs are crocodilian. There aren't crocodiles around here, and certainly not this far down, and he really doesn't want to know how it came to have claws like that. Topping it all off, as it fully passes through his limited range of view, is a thick, shark-like tail—probably what he heard on the stairs.

He didn't see this monster in any of the tanks today; this monster isn't even restrained. It's roaming the halls freely. Does Sendak just set monsters loose every night to keep the workers in line? Jesus christ.

The creature continues its slow way down the hall, out of Lance's view but getting ever closer; he can still hear its labored breathing. Sea turtles can breathe air but there's no telling what this monster used to be, or what's been done to it internally.

Speaking of monsters… if there's one in the hall here, there's probably others throughout the dome. Lance looks up; he can see a faint outline of light around the trash door upstairs. The garbage chute isn't exactly the most dignified means of travel, but at least it's monster free.

Probably.

He presses his arms to either side of him and scoots his torso up a bit, then walks his feet up to match. Then again. And again. It's going to be slow progress, but it's feasible. Though his legs are already threatening to cramp.

He's only about a foot above the chute door when he hears a nearby growl. There's a noise right below him of scale scraping against metal, and he freezes; then light floods the chute beneath him. He peers down carefully between his legs; the door has been pulled open, and the turtle-thing is slowly extending its head in.

Shit.

Lance holds his breath. The monster's head sways side to side on its impossibly long neck, peering down the chute. It starts to retract, and for a moment, he thinks he's safe.

Then it twists upwards, and its glowing eyes meet Lance's. Its hissing jaws open to reveal row after row of teeth.

Lance yelps and automatically recoils—the motion dislodges him from where he's wedged himself in the chute, and he slips, falling downwards onto the monster's head and past the door—there's a loud _snap_ as he passes, and he has a blurred glimpse of the monster's neck bent oddly into the chute, the glow in its eyes fading—and then he's scrabbling for purchase against the slick metal walls as he tumbles down into the darkness below.

He lands heavily on a heap of trash—forgiving enough to cushion his fall, but not so much that he doesn’t gain a few new bruises. There's a scraping sound above him, and he rolls away down the pile, yelping at every hard edge that digs into him on the way down. There's a _whump_ behind him moments later, and he pulls himself up to look; the turtle monster is unmoving, upside down on the top of the pile, spiked shell impaling the trash where Lance had just been. He shudders.

Lance looks around; there's an ambient glow around the pile but the room is still too dim to tell its size. It’s big, though, by the echoing of water lapping against many different surfaces. The pungent scent of trash now mingles with something softer, salty. Also, the glow seems to be moving. He scoots down the pile a little more, and his feet meet water.

“If this is a trash compactor, I swear to god,” he mutters to himself. There's a sound like a surfacing whale, and he twists to see a glowing fin break through the floating trash on the surface. Just as quickly as it appears, it submerges again, muting its light and taking a great deal of Lance’s trash island with it. He could have sworn he saw jaws scooping up the debris before it was gone.

Alright. Some kind of glowing, trash eating whale colony lives down here. Swell.

Now, how does he get _out?_

There are a few other trash islands in here—the dome is pretty big, but not so big that there's a whole ocean down here. He figures his best bet is to get to the wall and find an access ladder, or something; there's gotta be a way out of here. Hopefully.

He picks his way around to the other side of his trash pile; like he hoped, the wall is only maybe twenty feet away, and he sees something that _might_ be a ladder. Unfortunately, the water between it and him contains a couple of shifting, glowing shapes, and frankly he doesn't trust for a second that these trash-eating whale things won't accept fresh meat.

Actually, if they do, he's got the perfect distraction.

He clambers back up the pile toward the still-unmoving turtle monster; up close, it's obvious his fall snapped its neck. He grips the edge of its shell, careful not to touch the spikes, and shoves.

The monster slides down the far side of the pile in a noisy landslide of trash. The whale things must hear it, for they turn, and start swimming around the mound as Lance slides carefully back down the side closest to the wall. He only catches glimpses of the whales through the floating trash—a fin here, a dark striped flank there—before they pass out of view, leaving him in darkness. The ladder is just a faint shadow of markings on the wall. Splashing echoes through the room.

He slips into the stinking water, and swims like hell.

The wall isn't far, but he's impeded by the trash in his way; he ends up doing a sort of exaggerated breaststroke, trying to clear his path and move forward simultaneously. He doesn't dare look back, just keeps his gaze fixed on the wall ahead.

He gasps and splutters in relief when his fingers close around what has to be a ladder rung bolted to the wall. He reaches up for the next one and pulls himself up with shaking arms, cursing the adrenaline still pumping through him, and reaches up for the next. There's the sound of a breaching whale again behind him, and he looks down.

One of the glowing monsters is right behind him. Up close, it looks a little bit like an orca in coloration, but in shape more like a basking shark—all mouth. It bumps up against his calf as he presses against the wall. When it turns, he can see one of its tiny eyes, clouded and pale. It can't see him.

He quickly steps up out of the water before it decides to taste him instead. The wall is sloped slightly inward here—it _is_ a dome—and it takes all of his strength to climb. His exhaustion is catching up with him and he's kind of starting to wish for some of that adrenaline back.

Still, he makes it to the top, and pushes weakly against the surface above him. It gives a little, but then catches on something; it's too dark to see all the way up here, and he feels around for a latch. Finding it, he flicks it open and pushes up through the trapdoor, hauling himself onto the blessedly solid floor.

He gives himself thirty seconds to lie there and pant before rolling up to sit and close the trapdoor. When he finally looks around, he realizes with dismay he recognizes this hallway—it's the one outside the bunk room, and down at the opposite end is the garbage chute he fell through.

Fuck.

In all honesty, he just wants to go to bed. It's not lame to give up and try again tomorrow, right? He fell down a _garbage chute_ , for fuck's sake.

He drags himself up to his feet, and traipses back towards the bunk room. He badly needs a shower—he's still dripping wet—but there are plenty of extra clean pajamas and smelling like a dump isn't gonna keep him from falling asleep at this point, so long as he can dry off a little.

He steps up to the bunk room door, and it doesn't open. He pushes on it, feels all around its edges and frame for some kind of controls—nothing.

“ _Fuck._ ” He groans and leans his head against the door. Figures he'd somehow get locked out, really. And if any more monsters show up he's _really_ not keen on falling down the garbage chute again.

Then there's a noise, and the door slides open. He stumbles back; Shiro is there on the other side, arms crossed and looking at him sternly.

“You're a fool,” he says.

“Yeah, I'd noticed,” Lance says drily. He watches Shiro's nose wrinkle as the smell hits him.

“Where the hell’ve you been?”

“Fell down the garbage chute.”

Shiro's eyebrows shoot up. He steps aside to let Lance back into the room, but as soon as the door is closed he's pulling him across the room and into the bathroom.

“So,” he says once they’re inside with the door closed, “was there a reason you were in the garbage chute?”

“No, I like smelling like trash for recreation.”

Shiro gives him a look. Lance huffs.

“I heard a monster coming down the stairs and I panicked and hid there, okay?”

“What, Rex?”

This time Lance is the one giving a look.

“Spiky turtle,” Shiro clarifies, and Lance nods. “Did that work?”

“No, it still found me. Hence the falling. I broke its neck on the way down, though.”

Shiro straightens. “Where's the body?” he asks urgently.

“Being eaten by the…” Lance waves his hand vaguely. “Trash whales? There's these big glowing things that live down there.”

“In… water?”

“Yeah?”

Shiro frowns, and leans back on the sink, crossing his arms. He looks past Lance for a moment.

“I see,” he says slowly. His eyes flick back to Lance. “Then we don't have much of a choice.”

Lance swallows nervously. “What?”

“There may be a way to get you out of here,” Shiro says slowly, and Lance perks right up. “But we'll have to do it tonight, before anyone notices Rex is missing. But it's… not exactly ideal.”

“What do you mean?”

Shiro sighs. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

* * *

Lance stands outside a little closet off the Monster Room, looking around nervously. The closet was supposed to be secret; there are at least two monsters patrolling this floor right now. Shiro is inside, rummaging through the contents within. He emerges with an armful of scuba gear, and nods to the side; together they slip into a surgery room, and Shiro closes the door behind them.

“I thought you said there wasn’t a way out,” Lance says.

“Not exactly,” says Shiro. “There’s a maintenance exit somewhere. Haxus was the only one Sendak trusted to use it—before he died in an accident—so none of us knew where it was. But if there’s water below us, it has to be there.”

Lance looks at the gear. “What about however my sub got sucked in here? If you had the gear, why not just leave that way?”

Shiro gives him a look. “We’re hundreds of feet below the surface, Lance. The water pressure is too high. But the maintenance exit will have a compression chamber to acclimate you to the ambient pressure.” He hefts one of the tanks in hand. “Besides, these things don’t hold enough gas to get you to the surface slowly enough to properly decompress. You _will_ get the bends, and probably hypothermia besides, but it’s the only option. The supply ship is due in the morning, they can pick you up.”

“Okay,” Lance says slowly, eyeing the gear; it’s more complex than the scuba gear he’s used to but he’s pretty sure he can figure it out. “What about you?”

Shiro turns and dumps the gear onto the surgery table. His shirt hides the claw marks Lance knows must still be there. “What about me?”

“Is there another set of this stuff?”

“…No.”

“So you’re just… gonna stay? Aren't you gonna get in trouble for helping me again?”

Shiro freezes for the briefest moment, and starts rummaging through a drawer instead of looking back at Lance. “Only if Sendak finds out it was me.”

“Don't tell me there aren't cameras or anything around here. And if I'm gone there's no way he won't know _something_ happened.”

Shiro doesn't respond.

“What, d'you _wanna_ die?” Lance steps forward to stand beside him. “Listen, you saved my life, like, three times today. You’re way too good of a person to be stuck down here. You were like… my idol in high school, okay? I can’t just _leave_ you.”

Shiro snorts lightly, and turns his head finally. “Your idol?”

“Okay, crush,” Lance admits. “Huge crush. But that’s not the point, even if you weren’t I wouldn’t just—”

“You were mine, too.” Now Shiro turns fully to face him, a hint of a smile playing across his face. Lance gapes.

“Fuck. Really? Wait, no no, don’t change the subject.” Lance straightens up and points at Shiro. “I’m _not_ leaving if I can’t take you with me.”

Shiro’s smile drops. “Lance, I can’t. Even if it was possible, I…” He looks down at his pink fist, resting on the counter beside him. “I'm a monster now, just like everything in the tanks out there. I can't go back like this.”

Lance takes a deep breath. “Okay, first of all, you’re not a monster. You don’t act like one, and anyway, that hand is just like… a weird prosthetic. It’s not like a spiky turtle or a squid dolphin, okay?” He reaches forward and takes said hand, and encloses it in his own. “And if anyone asks—and no one _will_ —you tell 'em it's bad eczema, or a burn, and that's that.”

Shiro snorts, but he doesn’t take his hand out of Lance’s yet.

“Second of all, maybe it’s not so impossible. I know you believe that if something happens to this place you'll all go down with it, but do you really think Sendak's the sort to just sit around and wait to drown? No, he's gonna scoot off in his secret hidden submarine or something and leave the _rest_ of you to drown.”

Shiro blinks, and looks up. “You think he has one?”

“I think he has a way out he hasn't told anyone about, sub or not.”

Shiro is quiet for a moment. Slowly, he nods. “You might be right about that.”

“Of course I’m right.” Lance grins. “We don’t need all this stuff after all.”

Shiro is still nodding. “Instead, we find his escape route…”

“And we both get the hell out of Dodge.”

Shiro smirks a little at that. He finally takes his right hand back, only to drop his left to Lance's hip. He leans in, and Lance freezes up at the sudden proximity.

“I like the sound of that,” Shiro says, voice deepening. Lance blushes.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Shiro closes his eyes and leans in further, bumping his forehead against Lance's. “So, I want you to know that I'm really sorry about this.”

Lance blinks. “What?”

There's a prick on the side of his neck, and then a clatter. Shiro grips his wrists, keeping him in place as he turns to see a syringe rolling across the counter beside him.

“Find that exit,” Shiro tells him. “And swim up. Swim as fast as you can, Lance.”

“W-what? Wait…” He's starting to feel woozy—his ears are ringing and the edges of his vision are turning black. The syringe… “Shiro?” His mouth feels loose, odd.

“Sorry,” Shiro says again, and Lance passes out.

* * *

Lance wakes up back in the fucking trash room.

He lies there a moment, hearing the sound of the water and whales and feeling all the junk under him digging into his back, before his brain catches up to him and he sits up sharply. The movement dislodges the pile of gear on his chest into his lap.

Shit, he… Shiro _sedated_ him. And told him to swim… which means he’s still up there, somewhere, not escaping with Lance. Not even intending to try.

What fucking gives? Did Shiro not believe that there had to be another way out after all? Is he just resigned to living out the rest of his pathetic life here?

Did he choose the certainty of Lance's escape over the possibility of his own?

Lance gets to his feet as he looks around, leaving the gear atop the pile. That _ass,_ Lance's escape isn't certain—not when he's determined to drag Shiro along. Where's the ladder? He's gotta climb back up there and give the guy a piece of his mind for dumping him down here when they could've both gotten out.

He spots the ladder in the same place it was before; the whales are elsewhere, so that's a small blessing. He scrambles down the pile and dives right in, swimming hard toward the wall. He climbs up the ladder at top speed and shoves up against the trapdoor. It doesn't open so he feels for the latch but finds it unlocked; the door barely budges when he pushes against it again, as if…as if there's something heavy on it. Fuck. Okay.

Well, he got into the dome from the outside once before, if he really can get out from down here then he can get back in.

And… probably still get the bends, but that’s something to worry about later.

He hurries back down the ladder, eyeing the moving glow across the room before slipping back into the water and returning to the pile. There’s a wetsuit with the gear that he struggles to put on over his sodden pajamas before giving up and taking them off first; the water outside the dome is going to be much colder than in and he would’ve liked the extra layer of insulation, but he really should have thought of that before he got them soaked. He doesn’t intend to be out there long anyway.

Fully equipped, he looks around again; he figures there must be some marking or something indicating where the supposed exit is, but he sees nothing. Failing that, it’s probably near the ladder. He can’t imagine that someone coming down here on purpose would choose to jump down the garbage chute, nor risk going far with those glowing whales about.

So he slides down the pile and, once again, slips into the water and swims toward the ladder.

He doesn’t put his mouthpiece in until he’s at the wall, partly because he doesn’t need to and partly because he’s pretty sure that, judging by the assortment of gas canisters strapped to him, he won’t be breathing air—mostly oxygen and helium instead. Which makes sense considering the pressure he’ll experience, but he’s not outside the dome yet.

He dives, and switches on the little light on his mask. There’s an arrow pointing down, painted on the wall just below the water level. He swims until the light shines on a rectangular opening in the wall.

Out of the corner of his eye he can see an approaching glow; one of the whale things must have heard him or smelled him or something. He ducks quickly down into the hole, and feels around for some kind of control or light or _something_ inside while the whale approaches. It reaches him before he finds any, and bumps blindly against the opening, too big to actually fit through.

Lance’s fingers _finally_ brush against something other than concrete, and he takes his eyes off the circling whale to look. He presses a few buttons and the little chamber lights up; a door slides across the opening and seals itself. Another button, and a countdown appear on the little screen, and he can hear the whirr of pumps nearby. Alright, no turning back now.

Also, he’s going to be stuck in here for the next hour or so. Fantastic.

* * *

Lance is all but dozing when the timer finally beeps and the outer door slides open. He starts at the noise and double checks the control panel. He’s at ambient pressure, obviously, considering the chamber is now open to the ocean. He feels sluggish as he pulls himself out the opening, though whether from fatigue or the pressure, he’s not sure. Maybe both.

The ocean greets him with an oppressive darkness that his little mask light barely penetrates. He shudders and pulls himself along the dome, hand over hand, clinging to its solidity. His instincts are screaming danger at him, at the way he’s got his back turned to the great wide unknown, but facing it is worse.

He could just… swim up. To the light and warmth and relative safety of the surface. Tell the world what's down here and let someone else rescue the workers within.

But Shiro might not survive that long.

When he feels another current tugging at him, stronger than the one inside, he follows it. He doesn't get far before it pulls him in of its own accord, the same force that took his sub—then he's tumbling, scraping against concrete, unsure of which direction is even up until the motion settles.

He twists around, trying to determine where he’s found himself now, and sees his sub on the pool floor beneath him. Right back where he started, then. When he looks up, though, he sees not the surface of the pool, but another door like the ones in the compression chamber, but much larger. The way back out to the ocean is also sealed.

That… makes sense, actually. He didn’t feel much difference in pressure when he got sucked in, and anyway, taking in creatures that live at this pressure and suddenly exposing them to a much lower pressure would probably kill them. Might kill him too, frankly.

Of course, he realizes, as he hears pumps starting up, that he’s going to have to wait again. Which is a problem, because he was _kind of_ in a hurry. Hopefully the decompression will end before the night does, though whether or not he’ll have enough time to actually find Sendak’s escape route—let alone use it—is uncertain.

Or whether he’ll get out before he runs out of gas.

He settles down on top of his old sub and waits.

* * *

He must’ve dozed off again, because he’s woken up by his own labored breathing. He looks up and around; the pool is still sealed over, and there’s no way to tell how long he’s been in here. He checks the gauges on his tanks and finds the oxygen is running low.

_These things don’t hold enough gas to get you to the surface slowly enough to properly decompress,_ Shiro had said. Shit.

Lance swims up to the door over the pool, looking all along its edge, hoping to find some way to open it. Failing that, he looks for a control panel, feeling all along the walls, even though his light shows him there’s nothing there. He resorts to banging on the door above and praying someone will hear.

Apparently someone does, because moments later the door shudders. It takes a moment, but slowly it slides back; the light of the room beyond is almost blinding to Lance after the hours he’s spent in the darkness. He surfaces as soon as there’s room to, and pulls off his mask to gasp for air, blinking and coughing until his lungs are satisfied and his eyes have adjusted enough to see that the figure standing above the pool is Sendak.

“Shit,” says Lance.

“You don’t say,” says Sendak, before reaching down with his claw and all but hauling Lance out of the water. He cuts the straps of the gear and tosses it aside and drags him, struggling, out of the room and down the hall into the Monster Room.

The workers stare as he’s flung to the ground. Shiro is with them, unhurt but as shocked as anyone else, and his face crumples in distress when Lance glares at him.

“Who helped him?” Sendak rumbles.

No one moves. Lance coughs.

“ _Who helped him?_ ”

Still no one speaks. Lance pointedly doesn't look at Shiro.

“He could not have done this on his own!” Sendak roars, and kicks Lance in the side, making him yell in pain. “One of you knew where to find scuba gear. One of you helped him steal it!”

“It was this or steal your secret sub,” Lance wheezes, mentally crossing his fingers. There's a pause, and then Sendak rolls him over with a kick.

“ _How do you know about that?_ ” he growls, and Lance can't help the grin that spreads across his face.

“I didn't,” he coughs.

There's a murmur among the workers. Lance looks up, meets Shiro's eyes upside down. Shiro looks over at Sendak.

“So you would escape and leave us all to die,” he says.

There's a collective gasp at that, and Sendak kicks Lance so hard he sees stars. He curls away, wheezing for breath, only vaguely aware of the commotion behind him.

He is aware, though, when someone drags him over by one of the tanks, and presses a hand against his bruised side, feeling for damage through the wetsuit.

“You'll be okay.” It’s Matt. “That was brave of you.”

When Lance finally manages to look up, he sees a crowd of slashed lab coats and flailing arms, and Sendak, tipping over into a circling Bertha's tank. She sinks her beak into his frantically kicking leg, and someone cheers.

Then Shiro comes and crouches by Lance's side.

“You didn't have to come back,” he says. Lance coughs.

“I said you should come with me,” he reminds him slowly. “And then you dumped me down the trash chute?”

Shiro winces. “Sorry.”

Lance looks up to where Sendak is still fighting off Bertha and makes a face. “I guess it's turning out… okay?”

Shiro glances over his shoulder. “I don't think she'll kill him. Probably. You should change and eat; the food here will help you heal.”

“Healing food,” Lance wheezes as Shiro helps him sit up. “Explains a lot.”

They limp down to the living quarters so Lance can change into something dry, then to the mess hall. Several other workers show up to help and report on the search for Sendak's sub.

He's kind of smug that he was right about that.

Lance is about halfway through breakfast and starting to feel a lot better when someone finds it. She comes tearing into the mess hall where Shiro is still keeping Lance company.

“We can probably fit at least three people in there,” she gasps at them. “If we take enough trips, we can get everyone up to the surface! We're going to be free!”

“If any of us can pilot it,” says Shiro.

“I probably can,” Lance says around a mouthful of bagel. “You know how I got here.”

Shiro looks at him, considering before he nods.

“Alright,” he says. “We're in your hands.”

Lance swallows and grins. “And you all said there was no escape.”

Shiro smiles back. “Looks like you've proved us wrong.”

On the first trip up, they manage to intercept the supply ship; the man aboard had been paid not to ask questions and is shocked to discover there's a whole host of people trapped far beneath them.

“I'll most certainly wait here for you all,” he promises.

It takes a good twenty-odd trips to get everyone up to the little boat—it's more than a little overstuffed, but the captain pats the wheel and promises she can take it. Lance heads back down for the final passengers: Shiro and the injured and bound Sendak.

Getting Sendak into the sub involves a lot of struggling and cursing from all involved, and Lance wonders if they ought to bother at all considering all Sendak’s done.

“We _could_ just leave him here,” Lance says.

“No,” says Shiro. “He knows too much. There's a lot we need to sort out back on land—and he has to answer for his actions, but not like this.”

Sendak growls at them through his gag, and Lance shrugs.

“If you insist,” he says.

They get back to the ship fine, but there’s nothing to do except abandon the sub. The fresh, salty air is such a relief, though, especially once they get underway and Lance can face the breeze. He’s just considering napping in the cabin below when he hears a commotion on the back deck—Sendak has twisted half-free of his restraints. He jerks angrily away from the hands that grab for him and, deliberately, tips right over the edge of the boat. Lance chokes on a gasp.

“M-man overboard!” he says, and the captain cuts the engine right away. They rush back to join the crowd looking out across the water for any sign of him.

They see none, only the slow rise and fall of ocean swells.

“Should we look for him?” Lance asks Shiro, who's frowning at the waves with the rest of them.

“No,” he says, after a moment's consideration. “Leave him to the sea.”

There's a murmur of assent from the rest. The captain and Lance exchange a look.

“Alright,” says Lance, and he turns back to the bridge, ready to put this whole ordeal behind him. “Let's go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> find me @[maternalcube](http://maternalcube.tumblr.com/) on tumbl


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